10 years later, dreams of the Space Shuttle Columbia

As a boy, I wanted to be an astronaut. A commander of flights into the unknown alluring dark of space after the fashion of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Neil Armstrong. But destiny saw it differently.

But by the age of 30, the dream was still alive in me — working for NASA, working in human spaceflight, working on a mission into space! With education as my newfound life’s passion, I was spearheading an experimental digital learning project: theatrical science education using live actors, virtual characters, and experiential methods to communicate science to the public. It seemed my earlier aspirations for outer space exploration had turned to the inner space journeys of the mind. But at least it was an exploration set in that same context of irresistible cosmos from my childhood.

It was 2001. The focus of my project was upcoming space shuttle mission STS 107, ferrying seven representatives of our species into space. It was in all respects a dream project. My brother/partner and I forged a relationship with George Lucas to pull off the magic. For two consummate Star Wars fanatics, it was a validation of the highest order, with perks: filming at SkyWalker Ranch, exchanging ideas, writing scripts, discussing technology, and meeting face-to-droid with an idol of my childhood – R2D2. The project was becoming a bonafide confluence of childhood aspirations.

But it was the shuttle crew who collaborated on the project that resonated with me in the deepest ways. Michael Andersen, Willie McCool, Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, David Brown, Laural Clark, and Kalpana Chalwla. They were everything astronauts were fashioned to be: brave, sharp, and curious pioneers intent on joining with space, absorbing the emptiness and filling it with their own over-achieving, competitive innocence. We worked closely with each of them, learning their stories, their work, their passions. Individually, they exuded a contagious thirst for adventure and daring, tempered with a healthy dash of science and inquiry. And I harbored a secret jealousy for their path, which so resembled my own conjured childhood persona and now seemed only to highlight its remoteness.

Collectively, this close tribe of scientific sojourners formed the most intimate of families, and I was a welcomed, if only occasionally, as a guest at the table for two years as they prepared for flight. I remember Kalpana Chawla, or KC, the most. One of three veteran space fliers on the mission, I asked her on camera to share with us something of the experience of spaceflight. Indian by birth, scientist by training, but all heart as we were to discover.

“Space flight is definitely going to affect everybody differently, it’s a given,” she started. “One of my office mates had told me, make sure that you look at the Earth. And I took that very seriously and said, somehow or another I’m going to look at Earth for one whole orbit.” She spoke in a slow and precise accented rhythm. “An orbit takes ninety minutes. Late in our flight I had that opportunity during a sleep period. And I hovered by the window and just looked at Earth for a whole ninety minutes.” She cast her enchantment upon us, effortlessly sweeping us up into low Earth orbit with her.

“The continents were moving by … the very green Atlantic Ocean… and the desert comes, the Sahara. And there are landscapes, which look as if you are on Mars already.” Her eyes gleamed with the dreamlike faraway gaze of a woman in love. “Then there is the Nile, which looks very much like a lifeline. You see clouds with lightning just shimmering through them because you are looking at it from above rather than below.” In my mind, dark storm clouds sparked and glowed with beautiful violence.

“Coming over to Australia and how the Great Barrier Reef looks… it sounds like a cliché, but Australia really wears a necklace around it.” She smiled at the memory. “And during the early morning lights and the late afternoon lights, you can see shadows and sparkles and it just looks very magical.” The blue-green sea shimmered with a million tiny reflections three hundred miles below. The arching world sphere shone in aqua brilliance. “And you see a sunrise, a sunset during that time, which is so colorful — very fast, almost like a kaleidoscope.” The Sun crested the curved horizon, exploding dawn everywhere.

“And then, it’s ninety minutes … you are back where you were. And you know, it wasn’t that the sights themselves were impressive, they were.” Suddenly, we were once again sitting in the room with the camera and the lights. I struggled to shrug off the dream, the afterglow of space travel.

“But what really struck me was… my Gosh, it took just ninety minutes. To me, it’s almost like a mantra that still rings.” Here she paused to formulate. “You know, you go from one place to another, anywhere, and it takes you time. And we’d gone around this whole planet and this is the only place we know where life exists… and it took just ninety minutes!” She punctuated the statement with her clarion eyes. “It’s not a new piece of information. I knew that. But it stuck. And it really amplified the fact… how small this place is.” A tiny Earth suddenly flashed in my mind; a mote in the sea of black.

“I mean there’s this whole big sky, filled with stars that seem far away, but this right below is the only place that I know that can sustain me… where I can feel the wind, the water… listen to the leaves rustling.” The hypnotic sounds called me home across the void, so small in the terrifying immensity.

Again I snapped back. KC was staring right at me, imploring. “And it really personally, makes you want to take care of it. It impacts you where you want to go to the people who are fighting and say, ‘You know, it takes only ninety minutes and then you are past this place.’” A pregnant silence followed.

There was nothing to say and we said nothing. My eyes were gratefully wet. As she spoke, I came to realize that KC was granting me my youthful heart’s long desire — to experience space. Ironically, it was Earth that she shared, but from a new perspective. Our place in a larger universe beyond, yet in terms of human truth. By this gift, I was now a traveler through space aboard my home world, and will forevermore be.

Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” And it was to these words I turned for comfort 10 years ago, that sunny February morning in 2003 as I watched the rain of smoke trails that once were the space shuttle Columbia, burning down through the sky in heartbreak. It was the end of Columbia, the beginning of the end of the shuttle era, and the end of my project and three years of my life.

But most painfully and senselessly, it was the end of Columbia’s crew. For months, I dreamed of them. They would gather around me in blue flight suits and black boots and tell me, “It’s alright, Brad,” that I had “done well,” and that they were proud of me. Words I longed to hear, I suppose, yet strangely unhealing in their irony; it was of course they who had done well and of whom I was proud. They would circle around me, touching my shoulders sympathetically. KC would shrug easily and smile. Then I would awake, struggling again to justify their deaths, trying to make peace with a blown apart faith in the direction of our space program … for which they had paid too dearly.

I struggle still, vacillating between the Invictus validation of their noble quest for knowledge and the needless, reasonless tragedy. Who, after all, can scale heaven?

Shaken by their example of literally giving it all you have to give, I would eventually pursue my own trajectory with deathless fervor, achieving a Ph.D., pushing the limits of my own field, and always sharing the story of the Columbia crew — to whom my debt will remain unbalanced. In the end, we are all perhaps dreams the Universe is having — individual waves on a single vast and starry sea. Our lives, identities, and deaths are simply shadows of reality; syntax of the metaphorical language we speak in order to explain experience to ourselves. If the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be, then perhaps we can also live in dreams, and perhaps goodbyes aren’t forever.

Brad McLain is an educational researcher with a doctorate from the University of Colorado in educational leadership and innovation, and director of XSci, the Experiential Science Education Research Collaborative and produces both projects and research based on STEM learning theory and the field of experiential learning.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

Posts by Category

Idea Log Archives

About The Idea Log

The idea log The Denver Post editorial board shares commentary and opinion on issues of interest to Coloradans.